us. It avails us little to blame the war; the low rate of construction before the war; the lack of proper planning to avoid deterioration and decay of entire neighborhoods; the low incomes of families which fail to attract profitable building enterprises; the difficulties in the building industry; or a dozen other things. What matters is that there is a job to be done now.

A few figures for New York City may be interesting, because they probably illustrate the situation in all cities. We have an absolute shortage of at least 150,000 apartments. This means that 150,000 families, or about 500,000 persons, are living under the crudest and most difficult conditions; with children in boarding houses without cooking facilities; doubled up and crowded in with other families; and even scattered so that the mother and children reside in one place and the father in another.

While this is a staggering figure, it does not reflect the total needs of the community in addition to the 150,000 families, almost all of whom are veterans, now living in slums and obsolete buildings.

In New York City, therefore, we have a total need for 750,000 new apartments if we are to satisfy the existing absolute shortage and meet our replacement problem. Our first concern, of course, is to provide decent homes for veterans and other families who are now living under makeshift arrangements.

But in considering the housing needs of our cities, we cannot ignore the terrible problem of replacement and rehabilitation of our deteriorated areas, which affect the general welfare of our citizens and the financial stability of our governments.

A program of this extent requires the utilization of all our resources, private and public. Private enterprise can and must be permitted to do the major portion of this job. In New York City we have given and will continue to give private enterprise every inducement and encouragement to build. We have assisted insurance companies and banks to undertake large-scale housing developments, now in the course of construction, by condemnation proceedings, closing of streets, replanning of the neighborhoods of the projects, and by some tax exemption.

As a further incentive to private enterprise, the Wagner-EllenderTaft bill now pending before your committee contains provisions insuring an annual return for investments in housing for families of moderate income of not less than 2% percent. This is a desirable provision which should encourage private industry to do its share toward alleviating the housing shortage.

It is evident, however, that private enterprise has not in the past been able to provide for the entire range of housing needs in the community, nor is there any reasonable prospect of its being able to do so. Only that portion of the job which cannot be done privately must be undertaken directly by government.

Even if we assume that private enterprise can and will undertake to build for three-fourths of the total need, in New York City, there would still remain a governmental responsibility for about 200,000 apartments. This portion of the job alone is of such magnitude that it requires an active partnership of the Federal, State, and local governments. In New York we have such a partnership, which has produced significant results over the years. The bill before your committee, when enacted into law, will continue this partnership.

In the first decade of public housing in New York City, we have provided apartments for more than 17,000 families, or for approximately 60,000 people. This was achieved mainly with the aid of the Federal Government under the United States Housing Act of 1937. That is why we seek the enactment of the bill before you.

The State of New York, in recognition of its obligation under this partnership, upon my urgent request has provided for $135,000,000 in additional loans by the State to the cities for public housing. This is in addition to $300,000,000 previously authorized by the State legislature in 1939, which funds have already been exhausted.

The bill limits the cost of construction and equipment, excluding land, demolition, and nondwelling facilities, to $1,250 per room in localities having a population of less than 500,000; $1,500 per room in localities with a population in excess of 500,000; and the Administrator, in his discretion, may increase any of these limits by $250 per room if he finds it is not feasible under the above limitations to construct the projects without sacrifice of sound standards of construction, design, or livability consistent with the objective of providing housing for veterans of low income, and if there is an acute need for such housing for veterans of low income.

We strongly urge that this provision be retained in the law, as it may prove difficult, even with these allowances, to construct housing in some areas.

We cannot urge too strongly on your committee that our principal interest is to have this bill approved by Congress. As I said before, everything should and must be done by public officials to make housing available for those many thousands of families, particularly veterans, who are in desperate need of decent living conditions.

The bill before you will help round out the threefold partnership necessary to help alleviate the housing problem. Insofar as New York State is concerned, additional loans have been authorized by the legislature for public housing. Such loans will permit the city of New York to erect low-cost public housing projects accommodating 10,357 families. The city in each territory will take care of its share by appropriate tax exemptions and guaranties.

Congress, by enacting the Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill, will complete the program by providing for the city of New York approximately 23,000 dwelling units, costing approximately $236,000,000.

Sites have been tentatively selected for these projects, and the city will be ready to proceed with acquisition and construction as soon as the funds are made available.

I don't want to leave the impression that low-cost housing provided under the bill before you or that provided from funds furnished by the State of New York will come anywhere near satisfying the needs, because it won't. However, it will be a good start.

At least from 30,000 to 35,000 families, in the course of the next 4 to 6 years, adding those who will be housed in the buildings now being constructed from the proceeds of the $300,000,000 State loan above referred to. All together, there will be over 50,000 families housed through Federal, State, and city moneys, and everyone who has a part in making this housing possible is entitled to take just pride therein.

I am sure we will all be glad to see these decent accommodations provided, and also hope that private industry will provide many, many more.

I strongly urge your committee to approve this bill, and express the sincere hope on behalf of myself and all the other mayors of the country, as well as in behalf of those who so badly need living quarters at low rentals, that Congress will very soon enact the bill into law and appropriate the necessary funds so that the actual work of construction may proceed.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Reid.

Miss Helen Hall, representing various social welfare organizations. Is that correct?

STATEMENT OF HELEN HALL, REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH CENTER WORKERS, FAMILY SERVICE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, AND THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF SETTLEMENTS, 265 HENRY STREET, NEW YORK CITY, N. Y.

Miss HALL. Yes, sír. We have submitted a brief in relation to the differences. We would like to give this very short statement just to try to express our urgency about housing. If you work with people every day, you have an extra sense of necessity for hurry and what it really means in people's lives.

I would just like to say that at Henry Street Settlement I am the director of that, in New York.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you not testify here last year?

Miss HALL. Yes.

What I would like to say is that I have every day in my life an example of what it means to live in the new Federal houses. We had a very bad area right opposite the Settlement, and I saw these awful places torn down and then saw the good ones come up. I go by them every day, and every day the people who live in them come into the settlement.

I feel as though everybody who is considering housing ought to have that same experience. I realize what it means to people who have lived in such rotten kind of housing to get into something that is as nice as those houses opposite us.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it the feeling of the people you are speaking of? Is their testimony in appreciation of that?

Miss HALL. I am representing them today, really. I am supposed to be representing a lot of welfare agencies, but it is really those people. It is what they say. I remember one woman running up to me and saying, "I have a little five-room paradise." That was when she just moved in. That is the way they felt.

People say they do not keep them well. They are so beautifully kept they are just charming. The people and the people in the houses are the best argument for houses we have in America, I am sure. The CHAIRMAN. What is your Settlement address?

Miss HALL. 265 Henry Street.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not believe in senatorial junkets, but I believe it would be possible sometime to see the conditions that you speak of,

and the contrast. It would be a help to a lot of us to see these things with our own eyes.

Miss HALL. It really would. I wish you would come to Henry Street. You could see the people themselves, and what they feel about it.

They always say when I go off, "Please tell the Senators what we feel." There is always a discussion beforehand, when I come up here, in our clubs and always I have the feeling that in some way I am expressing what they want to say, and are not here to say.

I am officially here for Henry Street, more than myself. But my own experience has been so personal and I know so closely what housing meant, that I did want to say that, too.

I am here today, however, representing the following national organizations: American Association of Social Workers, National Association of Jewish Center Workers, Family Service Association of America, and the National Federation of Settlements, which takes in the organization I especially represent.

The purpose of each one of these national welfare organizations is to represent the views of their member agencies who are concerned with improving the living conditions of the low-wage earners, and those families and individuals who require public or private aid in order to meet their health and welfare needs. These agencies deal with millions of families and individuals through their characterbuilding and family-service activities all over the country.

We

Our organizations know of the particular problems of the slum dwellers because we have lived close to them over the years. know of the moral and physical degradation, as well as the plain unhappiness which sets in when families have to double and triple up; we see the most precious asset of the Nation-its youth-bogged down in its quest to enjoy the fruits of our democracy.

You know, when you hear people in club meetings tell about the crowding, you just cannot believe that people can stand it. A day or two ago one of the families came in. There were two veterans who came back, and moved in with their wives, and the mother and father moved out into the living room-dining room, and the two other veterans' families took the two bedrooms. That kind of overcrowding, after 5 years of war, is pretty discouraging.

There is no question but that slums have led to abnormal incidence of infant mortality, children's diseases, tuberculosis, and other contagious diseases. The medical examination of numerous draft boards during the war found a high proportion of psychoneurotic rejectees from these slum areas. The New England Journal of Medicine published the result of a survey showing the direct relation between psychoneurosis in the rejectees and their residence in slums.

It is recognized that efforts to meet health and welfare needs of these families by visiting nurses, family case workers, settlement workers, and all of the other welfare agents are thwarted and blocked by the wretched housing conditions under which so many of their clients and neighbors are forced to live.

We are faced with the reality of a tremendous shortage of houses both as a result of wartime and prewar conditions. This is felt not only by a large proportion of the 131⁄2 million veterans but also by a great many of the millions of war workers who shifted their locations during the war.

You cannot fight a total war without dislocating the national economy. During the war years construction of houses, except for war purposes, was brought to a standstill. The 1941 inventories became depleted. Consequently, it was necessary for the Nation to inaugurate an emergency veterans' housing program which has made possible the completion of around 700,000 dwelling units to date. But this fact has only served to make more dramatic the housing crisis. A great number of these houses were built for sale and practically none were constructed for rental at less than $60 per dwelling unit per month. And the average veteran earns $48 per week.

That, I think, is one of the other things that is very hard to watch— the expensive houses that are going up and the veterans that cannot move into them.

As has already been presented to both the Senate Banking and Currency Committee and the Senate Special Committee on PostWar Planning and Economic Policy, it is clear that the vast number of families who need housing today cannot pay $60 per month or over. The reason, therefore, that the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill is so important is that it would provide the tools for a comprehensive national housing program for construction of houses between the rental ranges of $20 and $60 per month. For that reason this legislation was supported by our organizations last year and we look for speedy enactment this year.

Our social workers and nurses and those working in institutions report a situation which is day by day growing more acute. Aside from the physical and mental suffering, every day that this legislation lies unenacted costs the Government and community chests throughout the country needless expenditure of thousands of dollars. Children are being maintained in institutions, separated from their parents for the sole reason that the family unit cannot be reunited because there is no housing for the family. Other children are being maintained in correctional institutions at great cost to the State even though treatment has been completed and they are ready to go home. Why? Because the correction authorities will not permit their wards to return to the overcrowded conditions and slum habitations which will again bring on the situation which was the cause of the delinquency. Public hospitals and mental institutions have in them any number of patients who would be much better off at home, but they cannot be discharged because there is no fit housing for the patient to return to.

Recent reports from veterans' service centers across the country have shown that in 77 percent of the requests for help, the primary reason was the matter of housing and $40 per month rent was the average asked for.

This is not the first occasion on which our organizations have appeared before Congress in the interests of the establishment of a postwar national housing program. We appeared last year and we appeared during the war years when it seemed reasonable to have expected that there would have been fully established by the end of the war a national policy and program for the provision of housing for all income groups. Nearly 2 years have elapsed since the end of the war. It is in our judgment little short of a national disgrace that in March 1947 there still has not been established such a national housing program.